Bridgepoint Buys Tilney

Paul Das

30 March 2005

Liverpool-based asset management group Tilney is to be sold to Bridgepoint, according to reports in the British media. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Tilney is currently owned by Refco, the world´s largest private futures broker. Tilney is one of the UK's oldest private client managers. It has about 18,000 clients with an average portfolio size of £300,000. Michael Black, a Bridgepoint partner, told the Financial Times that Tilney had strong growth prospects, partly because its clients were extending their reach beyond long-only equity strategies into alternative asset classes, including hedge funds and commercial property. Tilney is over 150 years old and has diversified its product offering in recent years via acquisition. Since 2002, it has bought Opal, a Monaco-based fund-of-hedge-funds manager, Pensions Partnership, a consultant, the private client divisions of Edinburgh Fund Managers and SG Hambros, and Cardales, a commercial property fund manager.